The other day, after drawing the daily picture, a couple hours were spent obsessing over the nettle plant. A good way to tell that I'm a geek is that when my coworkers are talking about the latest TV show episodes I'm thinking about herbal remedies and plant properties. *facepalm*
And drinking green tea while studying plant properties is an excellent antidepressant. Just sayin'.
My focus on the nettle plant was first inspired by a quote in Les Miserables, where Victor Hugo is waxing eloquent upon the virtues of said plant:
"One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said: 'They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring-matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!' He added, after a pause: 'Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.' "
I first read the quote years ago, when reading Les Mis for the first time. I found it interesting, but not enough to study the plant and find out if this was really true about it.
Last night, all of that changed. *dramatic music*
(As a quick warning: I'm about to spout about the nettle. Feel free to leave while you still can. :p)
Blanching (steaming) or soaking the leaves relieves them of their sting, though they still need to be rinsed a few times to make sure that there are no stray stinging hairs left. After cooking it can be eaten like spinach and is full of vitamin A, C, iron, potassium, and calcium. It can also be made into a tea and drunk to help make skin clearer or hair shinier. Drying completely (for 24 hours) also can get rid of the sting.
My real interest for now, however, is its textile capabilities. The only nettles I know to find around here are in a ditch that contains runoff from surrounding fields...said runoff is filled with pesticides, herbicides, etc and I feel sick just thinking about eating anything that is saturated in those conditions. So my curiosity has been piqued instead with the idea of spinning the fibers--my mom has a drum carding machine and a portable spinning wheel that would help to work towards that goal.
I found a website that details how to harvest nettle fibers through a method called root retting. There are no pictures, and it seems to have been discovered through trial and error. While keeping that in mind, it also seems like it'd be a very interesting challenge to undertake. And if I ever have a location where I can plant or harvest nettle from a clean, non-pesticide-saturated source, I can try the actual ingesting part of using nettles. Until then...I think I'll pass.
On an interesting side note, apparently nettle fibers were spun and used until the mid-19th century and even in WWI during the ensuing cotton shortages (probably because it was cheaper and way more plentiful than flax or cotton). Part of the waste not want not mentality, perhaps? I don't really know...but I really wish that people would preserve these methods and ideas and abilities for other people to learn and use.
It reminds me of the old Foxfire books--it's a series of several books, filled with interviews collected in the '70s by a group of college students/researchers that were trying to preserve some of the 'old ways'. Most of the interviewees are ancient, crusty old folks way off in the mountains somewhere...but they had a LOT to say about the 'old way' of doing things and, while some of those things are amusing in their antiquity there's quite a lot of practical advise on self-sufficiency too.
But back to the nettle.
I've scoped out a little clump in the ditch that's coming up--it looks to be a couple feet high, with no sign of flowers yet. I'm going to keep an eye on it and see about how to harvest it without stinging the crap out of myself -- I hear a lot about using gloves and scissors, but I'm thinking more like a hazmat suit. XD
Oh! I failed to mention that nettle is an excellent composting material too. After pulling/cutting a plant and letting it dry in the sun for a few days, it can be added to a compost pile to increase the nitrogen and silicon. I'm thinking of making a compost pile for the eventual herb garden (for now there's just a patch of comfrey well away from the rest of the garden because it's rather invasive, but I'd like to get some railroad ties and make a nice raised bed for everything else) and even the normal garden.
...I think I have way too many ideas and way too little time to do them. *shakes head* I need to start making a list, buckling down, and actually DOING stuff rather than just talking about them.
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